Gallagher v. Magner Ex Rel. City of St. Paul's Department of Neighborhood Housing & Property Improvement, 619 F.3d 823 (2010)

Citation: Gallagher v. Magner Ex Rel. City of St. Paul's Department of Neighborhood Housing & Property Improvement, 619 F.3d 823 (2010)
Parent Document: Gallagher v. Magner Ex Rel. City of St. Paul's Department of Neighborhood Housing & Property Improvement, 619 F.3d 823 (2010)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2010-09-01
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/174536/gallagher-v-magner-ex-rel-city-o... ↗

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Appellant Steven Johnson alleges that code enforcement officer Lisa Martin and
police officer Dean Koehnen made racially derogatory remarks about Johnson’s
African-American tenants (e.g., “The black plague come like roaches”) when Johnson
asked why the City was “coming after” his properties. The district court did not
address Johnson’s allegations, however, as Appellants failed to bring them to the
court’s attention. Indeed, the district court noted its frustration with “voluminous
materials—four file boxes worth—submitted by Plaintiffs in opposition to
Defendants’ motions for summary judgment.” Steinhauser v. City of St. Paul, 595 F.
Supp. 2d 987, 1020 (D. Minn. 2008). The court explained that Appellants failed to
“winnow out the relevant documents,” and therefore “the burden of doing so fell to
the Court.” Id. Johnson’s allegations about Martin and Koehnen were contained in
a single paragraph of a thirty-page affidavit, among nearly 2,000 pages of record
evidence. Appellants do not contest the district court’s portrayal of how the evidence
was presented to the district court. Given these circumstances, we decline to reverse
on the basis of Johnson’s allegations. See Midwest Oilseeds, Inc. v. Limagrain
Genetics Corp., 387 F.3d 705, 715 (8th Cir. 2004) (“‘Factual assertions that defeat a
summary judgment,’ however, ‘cannot be presented for the first time to [an] appellate
court, and only those matters properly before [the] district court for summary
judgment consideration are subject to appellate review.’” (citation omitted)); see also
Crossley v. Ga.-Pac. Corp., 355 F.3d 1112, 1113–14 (8th Cir. 2004) (per curiam)
(affirming summary judgment because the plaintiff failed to designate specific facts
as per Rule 56; he attached full transcripts from six depositions and argued that his
claim could be understood only upon a full reading of the depositions); White v.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., 904 F.2d 456, 458 (8th Cir. 1990) (per curiam) (“A district
court is not required to speculate on which portion of the record the nonmoving party
relies, nor is it obligated to wade through and search the entire record for some
specific facts that might support the nonmoving party’s claim.”) (quotation omitted).

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